After nearly a year of discussing it, preparation and completing a few projects at work we finally landed in Mauritus last weekend. We are still very much finding our feet, but waking up to great weather and a blue sky has made a nice change from Shanghai.

I plan to archive dive and intermingle some shots from Shanghai with posts from Mauritus, until I have cleared my back log of China shots I want to post. But I can already see that my photography is going to have to change , more landscapes than urbanscapes , more beach life than street life

These were taken the first weekend we were here on Tamarin beach , a 10 minute walk from our house.

What to do when you have neve seen snow before - have a sand ball fight. These kids had maticulasly built an arsenal of ammunition before breaking out into full out war .

Not long now before we depart this fair city for good. As part of saying goodbye and to celebrate Tera's birthday we decided to take a tour of the city on a motorbike and side car. 2 Hours on and off the bike , our guide took us to places we hadn't seen before , including the old Shanghai slaughterhouse and a walking tour of the narrow streets of one of the poorest neighborhoods still standing in the center of Shanghai

All shot with my Leica X Vario

Our mode of transport for the afternoon

Happy Birthday Tera . x

Yours truly and our Italian guide who was just a bit too young and handsome

Despite its deserved reputation for pollution , China actually does try when it comes to Green Policies . Here you can see how a lot of the public buses in Shanghai run on electricity , taking their charge from these overhead cables

A view from Puxi to Pudong. The building on the left was the original 'Expat' compound , the only places for westerners to stay during the 1920's and 1930's , apparently it was a rip roaring den of iniquity ...pretty much like most of Shanghai today ;-)

The Shanghai slaughterhouse , built by the British in 1933 to cater for the rising demand of red meat from western expats. Today its a beautiful gallery and art space

A cattle ramp , where cows would ascend to meet their maker

On top of the Slaughterhouse

Old Shanghai meets new shanghai

On to the old town , the poorest part of Shanghai . I believe the Electrician must turn up and think that its easier just to fit another wire than figure out which actually has the problem

The alleyways are very narrow and there is very little privacy , its very easy to see into someones home

There is a food market in the middle of the neighborhood , here you can see live birds for sale. You chose your bird , they take it from the cage , chop off its head and stuff the lot in a plastic bag for you to take away . Doesn't get much fresher than that !

It was all going so well , and then it started to rain . Luckily we were in the last 15 minutes of our tour.

Services for hire . Plumbers, carpenters , handymen

Purple pants, purple umberella and four shady men

Unfortunately this is how a lot of poor people live in Shanghai , here the lady is preparing food in her outside 'kitchen' next to the only room she lives in with her family.

It was Charlie's 3rd birthday , the three year old son of some good friends of ours , Lou and Justyn ,and I decided I would give my LeicaM240 an airing . As the light was dropping off I fitted my 35mm summilux asph lens so I could capture some of the low light action at fairly decent shutter speeds ( shooting at f1.4). The only problem with this is the thin depth of field it creates , but in these images I think its added to the photos.

I love this lens / camera combination , it draws beautifully , and am very pleased with how it coped with the low light and difficult indoor lighting conditions .

Happy birthday Charlie

Justyn acting as water bomb target practice for the children, but here one of the other dads getting involved in the throwing